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"One of Maugham's three major novels ..." TIME. That's high praise coming from TIME magazine. This MUST be good.

I’m sure some of you are familiar with a little American television drama series that aired on HBO from 2002-2008 called The Wire. I was way late to the party, but over the past 6 months or so, I’ve managed to watch all 5 glorious seasons back to back to back. Well, glorious to a point. But what the hell happened in season 5? I kept waiting for it to get good, kept waiting for something to happen. Waiting for the outlaw Omar Little to come along, whistling ‘The Farmer in the Dell,�� and take that bitch Marlo down. Man. Talk about anticlimactic. How you gonna do Omar like that, huh?

I had a similar experience with this book. I was really digging it for about 200 pages. Then an unfortunate thing happened��

I forgive the weirdness of Maugham interjecting himself as a minor character in the story and the weirdness of him being the narrator. I forgive the implausibility of every character just happening to feel the need to unburden themselves in his presence, whether they really knew him or not. What I cannot forgive is this:

I feel it right to warn the reader that he can very well skip this chapter without losing the thread of such story as I have to tell, since for the most part it is nothing more than the account of a conversation that I had with Larry. I should add, however, that except for this conversation I should perhaps not have thought it worth while to write this book.

What? What the What??? Well of course I have to read it now that you’ve said ��(blah blah blah) except for this conversation I should perhaps not have thought it worth while to write this book.�� But good God man, I wish I hadn’t. That was just awful. All that bullshit Eastern philosophy seemed so contrived. I think Maugham got confused for a moment there and thought he was Hermann Hesse. He is not Hermann Hesse. No one wants him to be Herman Hesse.

I loved that the main character (Larry Darrell) was going through his own ‘Eat, Pray, Love�� spiritual journey type thing, travelling from country to country trying to find his own version of Truth. I loved him, and I loved the way he eschewed all of the so called social norms and expectations and did his own thing. But that whole conversation was just plain hackneyed and I wish I had never read it. Minus that chapter, this is definitely a 4 star book. But quite honestly, I was sitting in a park reading the chapter that INSPIRED THE BOOK and I almost threw it in the garbage can unfinished.

I’m just bitterly trying to pretend that chapter never happened. If I could do it all again, I’d be like that annoying little kid who doesn’t want to listen to his mother, with his fingers in his ears going “la la la laaaa.. I can’t hear you." The end.